


Horse With No Name

by cthulhu-hungers (cherubiumangles)



Series: ben afleck is an illness, not a person [1]
Category: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys - Fandom, My Chemical Romance
Genre: M/M, frankenhorse, mad cactus killing spree, tripping balls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-18
Updated: 2011-06-18
Packaged: 2017-10-20 12:43:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/212893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherubiumangles/pseuds/cthulhu-hungers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Party Poison trips balls while Fun Ghoul goes on a cacti killing spree.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Horse With No Name

**Author's Note:**

> Manic Panic is a punk hair dye company. I am almost 99% sure that Gerard Way’s hair is Manic Panic Rock ‘n’ Roll Red.

When he had a guitar, back before the bombs, the first song Gerard ever learned was Horse with no Name. It was so simple even he couldn’t fuck it up; just e minor and then the two strings next to e minor, over and other again. It took him five minutes to learn.

Mikey just looked up at him with and said “Is that Horse with No Name?” with a look that was basically mikeyface for starry-eyed adoration. Even though his fingers were cramping and his back ached from leaning over the guitar, Gerard felt like a rockstar.

…

“Look, Dr. D, for the last time, I don’t know what the fuck Korse was doing sleeping alone in a hotel in the desert, and I don’t know what he did to Party…Fuck.” Ghoul clutched his broken ribs, wheezing.

“I’m sorry Dr. D, I just…Can I see Party now?”

Dr. Death Defying frowned. It was becoming increasingly clear that only Party Poison knew what happened between him, Fun Ghoul, and Korse in the hotel they stumbled on him in. Party had come in two days ago dragging Fun Ghoul sans rebreather behind him with a hole in Fun-Ghoul’s chest and lung and his own throat looking like hamburger meat. Dr. Death was surprised that Party hadn’t bleed out from that before making it to the diner. He and Show Pony managed to bind Fun Ghoul’s ribs and reinflate his lungs, only to have Party catch a fever and go into a coma just when they got Fun Ghoul stabilized.

Dr. Death knew that he shouldn’t have let Party convince him to use all the bandages on Ghoul. Show Pony was tearing his hair out trying the figure out what was wrong with Party; They’d both seen infected wounds in their time out here, but never a reaction like the one Party was having. They didn’t have much water on them, much less enough to keep a fever down; if Party didn’t wake up before they ran out of water, they wouldn’t be able to keep his temperature down enough to prevent brain damage.

“Yeah, kid, he’s in the back sleeping.”

“Thanks Doctor D.”

…

He was in the desert, but he knew he was dreaming.

The whole desert floor shimmered, mirage-like, the way it only could after a hard rain. Gerard pulled down his bandana and took a deep breath, relishing the air. The only good thing about the acid rains, and the only thing they had in common with the rain from before, was that they washed the radioactive dust out of the air. It was completely quiet except for the buzz of insects. If he stayed very still, he could almost hear the sounds of plants digging their way out of the soil and Dr. D’s airwaves themselves, through the years of toxic metals in his bones and in his hair.

There were plants all around him that he hadn’t seen in years. Prickly Pear, Yucca, Agave, Brittlebrush, Stick-Leaf, Beavertail, Desert Star, Monkey Flower, Thistle Sage, Snake’s Head, Desert Calico, Cactus flowers bright enough to put a Killjoy to shame. Before the war, they could fill every inch of the desert floor in a day, and be gone just as fast, turning the desert into a fast-rushing tide of color. Now there was only the Killjoys, who didn’t have nearly that kind of cover.

All those plants had died off with the bomb, or melted in the acid rain any time they dared peak above the soil.

…

Party was spread out on the table in his jeans and his black top, sweat dripping off all over his body on to the white sheet under him. Ghoul brushed Party’s damp hair off his forehead. He was sweating so much that his hair dye was running and leaving blue and red stains on the white sheet, his neck and his face.

“Fucking Manic Panic.” Ghoul muttered.

Pony skated in with a bowl of water and a sponge. “He’ll be fine, we just need to keep him hydrated and cool until the fever goes down.” He said, giving Ghoul the water. “Don’t pop your stitches. Seriously, I’m not stitching you up again.”

“Where are you going?”

“To send word to Jet Star and Kobra Kid. They need to be here.”

Ghoul nodded. Jet and Kid where going to meet with the top brass in some top-secret bunker and had taken Grace with them. None of them where high enough on the totem pole to know why Grace was so important to BLind, but they knew she was important. And if Kid knew, he wasn’t telling. Not that Kid told anyone anything if he could help it. With the Kid, everything was on a need-to-know basis and you never needed to know. Hopefully they’d have some water when they came back.

…

The plants were growing, Gerard realized, not just up but out. After he’d been walking under the sun long enough to feel the back of his neck begin to blister and peel, long enough to realize that he couldn’t find the sun in the sky and therefore his bearings, he found the edge of the plants. Gerard squirted up at the sky one more time, looking for the sun; nothing by the same robin’s egg blue as far as his eyes could see.

The edge of the growth was littered with huge cracks from how quickly the plants had sucked the moisture out of the soil, which was how he heard the horse. It was trotting around the edge of the growth, its hooves cracking the dry soil underneath it, plants growing up from where they broke the ground. Suddenly he was on it, and he saw that its back was littered with stitches and scars and chopped-up patterns of ink, like it had been made from a couple of different horses stitched together. Its back was sweaty and smooth like he was straddling bare skin, not rough and prickly like horse hair.

“Take me to water, please.” Gerard croaked, patting its dyed black mane weakly.

…

It was mid-afternoon by the time Ghoul ran out of water and words for Party. Ghoul ducked out of the room and found Dr. Death in the back room, fiddling with his CV.

“Got a bit of less-than-shiny news for you, my Diesel-pumping Gypsies of the Road. Keep your eyes open and your Raygun’s close- there’s been reports of dracs lurking in the old bomb shelters and hidey holes for a little siesta time on BLind’s clock. But they don’t wake easy, oh no. Our own Party Poison and Fun Ghoul ran into Ol’ Nosferatu himself in a hotel off Route 607. It was all Halloween up in there, but they got out before they got dusted and now they’re laying low and nursing their hangovers. So be careful out there kiddies.”

Ghoul tapped on the doorframe. Dr. Death switched over to the mixtape and wheeled over to Fun Ghoul. “What’s up?”

“Do you have any more water? I’m out.”

“Already? Shit. Try wringing out the sheet.”

“Wait, are you telling me you don’t have any more water?”

“I’ll look in the kitchen and you look in the rest of the diner, but I don’t think we’ll find anything.”

Fun Ghoul turned the diner upside down, cursing under his breath the whole time, but when they met an hour latter all they had was a quarter of a liter between them.

“Fuck.” Dr. Death said pithily. Fun Ghoul grabbed his gun holster and started putting it on.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” Dr. Death said.

“Keep Party cool. I’m taking the Trans Am.”

“Pony will come back with water.” Dr. Death said. “Besides, where the hell are you gonna get water out here?”

“I don’t know. I’ll find a barrel cactus or someone to trade with.”

“All you’re gonna do is pop your damn stitches and Pony’s gonna have to drag your ass back here and stitch you up again.”

“Who’s gonna stop me, you? I’m not gonna just sit here and watch Party’s brain fry!”

…

Gerard’s horse tore across the desert towards the horizon so fast he could see the horse’s face stitching starting to unravel, too-human hazel eyes wide, diesel fumes escaping from between the sutures. Behind them the desert scrub continued to grow. Poison wasn’t looking behind him anymore, he swore the plants were starting to pull up roots and walk to keep up with them. He wasn’t looking at the horse either, he swore he saw a scorpion earlier that he through was a tattoo but couldn’t be because it was moving. He felt the pull of hydraulics and muscle under his thighs, the pull of wind through his hair and the drying sweat on the side of his face pressed against the horse and didn’t look up until he felt the rain of Battery City on the other side of his face.

…

Ghoul was a fucking mechanic, figuring out how to use as clutch was easy. Should have been easy. But twenty minutes later Ghoul was screaming at the car between the pains in his lung and no closer to figuring out how to drive the damn thing.

“Dammit motherfucking bitch! Why won’t you work God dammit!” he wheezed, punching the car with the hand that wasn’t holding his side as hard as he could. “Please.” He wasn’t gonna cry, he couldn’t. Fucking Korse, fucking draculoids, fucking Show Pony, fucking Jet Star and Kobra Kid. If they were here Kobra could drive the car and they could, I don’t know, drive over to the next town or fuck you house and trade for some water, or attack a drac patrol and steal their water. Something, anything.

If he hadn’t been so stupid, so careless, Party wouldn’t be on Dr. Death’s desk, about to become a drooling vegetable. When the last Jet Star (the one before Ray joined) got a laser blast through the temple from a drac patrol that liquefied half his brain but still left him alive, Party had to finish him off. Party made him promise later that night if anything like that happened to him, he’d kill him himself. He’d always taken it for granted that rayguns were non-lethal weapons but fuck, they were still god damn lasers.

He couldn’t kill Party. Party was gonna die in a firefight, guns blazing, or when he was fucking seventy, because that’s how Party rolled. Ghoul popped the trunk and fished out the machete. He was gonna go ax murderer on some cacti out there and bring it back to the dinner, or he wasn’t gonna come back at all, because he couldn’t hurt Party, not like this, and besides, people like Party didn’t die like this, it was some unwritten law of the universe that beloved resistance figures didn’t end up drooling vegetables. He’d probably just wander around like an idiot for an hour and then find his way back to the dinner and Kobra and Jet will be there with, like, an assload of antibiotics and water and shit and years later they’ll look back on this laugh about that one time Fun Ghoul had a breakdown and went Michael Myers apeshit on the plant life near the diner with a Kobra’s rusty machete and two broken ribs.

…

The horse stopped in front of Battery City, turning to the side and skidding to a stop like a car in front of the BLind tower. The rest of the desert poured in through the dome access tunnels, spitefully tearing up the asphalt that kept them from reaching the ground with their roots. The cacti were swelling and growing, sucking up the moisture clouds of the city, while the other plant tore down the pristine white buildings, covering the white with color. The air was thick with flying lasers and giant cactus spines.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

Gerard and the horse watched the destruction of the city through the plate glass windows of an office, high up in BLind tower. Gerard wasn’t sure how he got here- had the horse taken him here? Could horses take stairs? Maybe it took the elevator? His head felt clearer that it had this entire dream- hell, this was the first time he could realize that he was in a dream.

The office was in sharp detail, not shimmery and unreal the way that the horse standing next to him was. Gerard turned to the room’s owner- Korse, of course, it just wouldn’t be a nightmare without him, and said “why not?”

“Because you’re dying. They always do when they’re bitten.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

Korse ran the sight of his blaster over the ragged edge of the wound on Gerard’s throat. Next thing he knew, his hands were wrapped around Korse’s throat (Why did time keep skipping), and his throat was cold and there was no pulse but he was still alive, his eyes where still moving, and the horse was biting Korse’s arm as Korse shoved the tip of his blaster through the hole in his neck and his head stopped hurting and started burning.

…

Frank spotted a flash of red in the miles of horizon. It took him a moment to realize what it was (there was always gonna be some part of his brain that associated that shade of red with Gerard)

He didn’t know what the fuck a barrel cactus was doing blooming when there hadn’t been a real rainstorm in the desert for ten years, but there it was.

…

When Party woke up again, Ghoul kissed him like he was on the moon and the only source of oxygen was Party’s mouth. Party certainly felt like he was on the moon when Ghoul kissed him like that. Ghoul smelled like he always did- like diesel and sweat, and Party let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding.

Ghoul eventually let Party go, hissing and clutching his side, only for Grace to launch herself at him like some tiny, swarthy afro ninja. “Party Party Party! Pony told us what happened and we came here really really fast on Kobra’s motor bike and we brought you water and a-cee-ta-men-o-fen and you’re ok now right? Kobra was really worried I can tell and don’t believe him when he says that he wasn’t because he’s lying, I saw him.”

Jet and Kobra were there too, with a pissed off Pony yelling at Ghoul, something about “52 spines, you crazy fucker, it’s a miracle I didn’t have to stitch you up again.” and Party’s head was starting to hurt all over again.

…

“What are you thankful for, my Motorheads? The day you first flushed your meds? Moonshine, maybe a little cactus wine when you can swing it? Waking up another day with all your limbs and brains in the same zone? Seems like we zonerunners own less yet have more to be thankful for than the pillheads in Battery City. It’s Nuke the Turkey Day today my lovely listeners, which I’m told is after Halloween but who’s counting these days? I know what I’m thankful for- miracles. They’re rarer than real rain these days, but I’ve had not just one but three these past few days; some lovely red flowers for my darling ladyboy, shinier than roses, a real honest-to-god Killjoy reunion, all the boys under the same roof for once, and miracle of miracles, Party Poison has stopped hogging my bed. What’s next, nitros raining on the shovelheads in Wolfblood beach? Oh, and if you see a purple-faced, wheezing man in a Halloween mask hacking at your front yard shrubbery, that’s just our pet Ghoul, don’t mind him.”

…

“And then I stormed Battery City with my army of desert plants on a horse made of human parts.”

“there’s metaphor in there somewhere. I just can’t think of what it is.”

“Are you sure my brother doesn’t have any brain damage, Pony?”

“Would any of us be able to tell the difference if he did?”

“...”

“So if you’re a redhead that can talk to plants, should we start calling you Poison Ivy, Party?”

“Shut up Ghoul. I pretty sure you were the Frankenhorse. Or the trans Am. I mean, the horse was the trans am and you were also the horse, not you were the trans Am. But maybe that makes you the trans Am too I guess.”

“That’s actually kinda cool.”

“I think you took a chunk out of Korse at some point.”

…

A week later, when Party slammed the door of the Trans Am in front of BLind Tower, he couldn’t help but wonder if dreams could be prophetic.


End file.
